​Well, I get that Amazon’s algorithms don’t know they’re pitching my own book to me when they make recommendations based on what I’ve searched. I buy all of my e-books as soon as I bring them up, and the algorithm doesn’t know I’m the author.  But here’s what Amazon doesn’t know: this time I was searching my own book because of this:

​You see that? This time, Amazon is telling all potential customers that said book is not available for them to purchase. Sure, it’s probably only on some devices. But that a product shows up as unpurchaseable on any device is appalling. And it’s a horrible business model.
 
Now, I print trade paperbacks through Amazon Createspace so I’ll have physical copies for book signings and author fairs. I don’t expect massive on-line sales. But I have enabled all the distribution channels—including Amazon—and I’ve enabled the feature that allows customers who buy the paperback to get the e-book at a steep discount. That’s assuming a customer is able to purchase the paperback.
 
I reached out to Createspace Support, and made them aware of what I was seeing. I wish I could say they expressed concern. Or a desire to correct the issue. Or even acknowledged that there was an issue. I wish.

​   What sells books? Great writing? An eye-catching cover? Savvy marketing? Search Engine Optimization? Personal appearances?
   Any and all. And all can be scuttled in a heartbeat by the device a customer shops with. Who knew?
   A fellow writer e-mailed me the other night—she wanted to buy one of my trade paperbacks, and it was showing up as “unavailable.” I use Createspace for the trade paperback, and the books are produced to order, so I was puzzled. I whipped out my Kindle Fire tablet, and sure enough, most of my titles were “unavailable” in trade paperback. Not all, but about half.
   I immediately logged on to Createspace, and verified that the titles were live, and the distribution channels included Amazon.com. I needed copies of The Ring of Allaire, so I ordered some. Then I contacted Createspace Support to see what insight they might have.
   Support promised to get back to me in one to two business days. (Obviously I am valuable to them. I am an author. I supply them with books. Without authors, they have no product to sell. They’d be reduced to peddling editing and cover creation services.)
   While I waited, I plied my laptop to look up my books on Amazon.com. No title was “unavailable.” But to find the trade paperbacks, I might have to click under the Kindle version, where it lists other formats, and click that paperback.
   I’d already told my friend about a local shop that had a copy of the book she wanted, but I also relayed the information I’d just gleaned. In a bit under 24 hours, I heard from Createspace Support. They had checked my book, and it was available. Well, that’s such a relief! People can buy my book.
   Assuming, that is, that they can find it. And if they’re using a tablet, they may not be able to. (For all I know, that applies to apps too.) When you’re using a tablet, the trade paperback appears to be “unavailable.” And I don’t know about you, but that would stop me cold, as a shopper. Shopping should be easy, not hard. That’s how you get sales.
   How many sales might this issue cost an author? No way to know that I can see. Createspace seems unaware of the issue. Haven’t asked Kindle.
   Kindle, Createspace and Fire tablets are all bits of Amazon.com. Be nice if they played well together, wouldn’t it? If they don’t, it pretty much defeats any marketing an author might do.

   In celebration of Spinzilla, which starts the first week of October, a brief Tristan story with a strong hand-spinning element in it. 

   ​The King of Calandra mounted, and settled gently into the saddle. He gathered the crimson-dyed leather reins, and the horse danced under him, eager.
   Which way do we go today? Valadan’s eyes sparked garnet and gold.
   “If we make for the coast, and follow the shore, do you think we could find Am Islin?” Tristan asked the Warhorse.
   The Frozen Sea is frozen no longer. But Valadan set off from Crogen on the instant, and no arrow’s flight was swifter, nor more direct. The countryside, grassland and forest, farmland and water-meadows, fell away behind his heels, until at last he stood upon a tall cliff, sea-breezes stirring his black mane. There was not a drop of sweat on his ebony hide.
   Tristan craned over his shoulder, looking down the cliff. “There’s a wide beach, looks as if it runs for leagues. Let’s see if there’s a way down.”
   They galloped between sand and surf, with sea birds crying over their heads. And all at once, Tristan spied out a dark speck on the sand ahead of them. Not a tower, no, perhaps a rock, tumbled from the cliffs above. There might be others. He slowed Valadan a touch, then a touch more. They were at a walk when they came up to the woman seated on a lump of smooth white stone at the tide-line. Tristan dismounted and closed the last few yards on his own feet.
   “Well met, Lady,” he said to Welslin Amberesdaughter. He wondered if he ought to bow, or drop to his knees, or if there was some more complex reverence properly made to her in days long past. She was spinning thread as she sat there, on a hand-spindle such as Elisena used—but there was no wool in sight, no flax, no reeled silk. Trying to watch closely dizzied him, but it seemed to Tristan that the foam of the waves gathered to her hands, and the sand of the beach swirled up to meet it, and became an endless thread which then flowed off of the spindle once more to lie in shining hanks by her slippered feet.
   “I wanted…to thank you, Lady, and Magister Ambere, for your help. The quest is achieved.”
   Welslin turned her head to her left. The wind played with her red hair, toyed with the ropes of pearls braided through it, and made a few sea-bird feathers flutter. “We know.”
   Tristan looked where she did, and saw a mountain peak in Channadran, a living feather of smoke rising from it. And at its side, a smaller plume—as if the mountain had a child. Not even a hawk had such sight as to see so far into Channadran from the coast, but Tristan knew the truth of what he beheld.
   “You have our thanks, as well,” Welslin said, her voice like the rush of waves against the beach, the beach where once a goddess’s heart had been washed ashore, and found, and in the end carried home.   
   “I thought to find the tower,” Tristan heard himself say. It had stood sentinel, impossible to miss.
   “No,” Welslin Amberesdaughter said. She was swinging her spindle as she twirled it, side to side and round and round. Tristan’s sight blurred, and he felt as if he might at any moment topple onto his long nose in the sand.
   “No,” he heard her say. “I waited here, for you. Seek not the tower.”
   The gulls cried, the wind whistled, the waves sighed regular as a heartbeat. Tristan remembered the stairway, twisting up the tower, as the thread was twisted on the spindle.
   Whose thread was she spinning? Tristan wondered. Whose life? He opened his eyes, seeking a clue in the thread or in her flawless face…
   There were skeins of white foam on the pale gold sand. The sea was the color of Allaire’s eyes. A smooth rock crouched on the sand, the waves and foam just lapping at it. There was nothing more. No spindle. No woman.
   The tide was turning. He and Valadan must go back, plainly the whole beach was within the sea’s reach.
   Tristan turned. Something flickered at the edge of his sight. A twist of wind-spun, wind-blown silk was caught on the unicorn buckle that fastened his belt. All the colors of his world were in it.
   Tristan waited for it to dissolve back into sea-foam and sand. When it did not, he coiled the hank of silk carefully, and tucked it into the pouch of magic stones that hung always from his belt.
   Then he mounted, and rode back to Crogen.

​   I’ve just learned—23 years after the fact—that The Wind Witch was part of a list of nominees for the 1994 Tiptree Awards. (Fiction that expands gender roles) Not nominated, exactly, but on the “long list” of works that deserve a look, even though they were not quite a fit for a nomination. Wow!
   I’m not sure how I feel about it. Of all my books, The Wind Witch is the one I’d be happiest living in. It got five printings, and I suspected some nominations, like maybe crossing genres to the RITAs for Romance novels. But there weren’t a lot of reviews I was aware of—this is pre-Amazon, so reviews didn’t get handily collected. And it went out of print along with all my other Del Rey books, and I had the rights reverted. But you’d think someone at Del Rey might have mentioned it, back in the day.
   Maybe they were bemused, as we all were when The Wizard’s Shadow was named to the New York Public Library’s List of 100 Books for the Teen Age. (Just didn’t think of that as a YA book!) Maybe someone was trying to live down listing it as part of The Warhorse of Estragon series. (Estragon is the French name for the herb tarragon. The Duchy is Esdragon. Might explain why I never stumbled across it.)
   The Tiptrees weren’t awards I expected my book to be nominated for anyway. I mean, is it expanding gender roles when two characters of very conventional orientation connect? She’s a widow who thinks she’s barren. He’s a POW and an exile by war and choice. Two people with baggage and pain and trust issues till the cows come home, and watching them reach past all that to trust where they both knew they shouldn’t was my great pleasure. But expanding gender roles…maybe it’s the shapeshifting thing. (Only that’s hardly gender.) People seem to love this book and these characters, and that pleases me. So I’m honored.
   And now that The Prince of Ill Luck is available once more, The Wind Witch is next. A whole new crop of readers can decide the question for themselves.

That’s right—Leith of the Isles, the Prince of Ill Luck, first master of the Warhorse of Esdragon, is back, with the reissue of The Prince of Ill Luck via Kindle, Nook and Createspace. The e-books are up, and I should have physical copies in hand for a signing at Confluence, the Pittsburgh Science Fiction Convention. (parsec-sff.org/confluence) Very lightly updated from the original Del Rey 1994 mass market paperback, new cover by Teddi Black. (teddiblack.com) Book template from The Book Designer.com.

Three Sheep Gallery
Saturday, October 29, 2016 Noon—4:00 PM
6010 Market Street, Boardman, Ohio 44512
 
Sinead Tyrone, Lauren Hogue, Susan Dexter
 
Readings at 12:15:1:15; 2:15; 3:15
 
Tips on writing and publishing at 12:30; 1:30; 2:30; 3:30
 
Meet the authors. Books will be for sale through Three Sheep Gallery, and you can have your purchases signed.

What I spun: Jake the Farmpark Jacob sheep’s 2016 fleece (3 pounds) dyed RIT Teal and Hyacinth after the powdered drink mix and vinegar failed to add any color. (Still  smells great, though!) Jake is a mainly brown Jacob, but he does have some white wool, so over-dyeing gives lovely colors. I combed the entire fleece for woolen spinning the week before Spinzilla began. I aim to spin it all this year.
 
How I spun: My 40 year old handmade drop spindle “Pet”. Made by a rug weaver and woodworker in New Bedford, PA. Bought at a Spinner’s Festival in Mercer PA.
 
Where I spun: In the barn, for my horse, Cash. For my co-workers. In the barn, for the new barn kitten, Chloe. For my cat, Kira. At the therapist’s, while my mom did PT. At Spinners Guild, in the Three Sheep Gallery. After my brother’s 60th birthday dinner. During the Presidential Debate on TV.  I did my most productive spinning while watching my DVR. (Poldark!) I did most of my plying while watching Saturday Night Live.
 
How I Did: 1580 yards, spun and plied between October 3rd and October 9th. (FYI—1740 yards is a mile of yarn.)The last two spindles I filled Sunday evening—I spun until 11:45—yielded 167 yards of singles, The rest of my yardage was triple-ply, six skeins of it.

1. Because I’m tired of being used. Rate the Product. Rate the Packaging. Rate the Delivery. Rate the Shipper. Rate the Seller. Answer Questions to “Help Another Customer”….but post a Book Review? I get thanked for reviewing, and then the review comes right down, presumably because as a published author, I am a professional. (I have certainly never concealed that—my first book was published by Del Rey Books in 1981. I had at least 7 books in print before Amazon even existed.)
2. It’s like the worst Loyalty Program ever. Amazon tracks your every move, buying, browsing. Asks for continual feedback. Makes horrible guesses as to what you might be looking for next. Wants you to rate a book you have not had time to read, and maybe share a photo too. There’s no compensation for your work, but Amazon constantly badgers you to do more of it. For them. For Free. I feel used, pestered, and stalked.
3. All customers should be treated equally. I get that it’s customers reviewing for other customers. But let’s be fair—if I buy a book on Amazon, am I not also a customer? Why ask me to review and then toss the review away?

 
   And who needs reviews anyway? As a customer, I am perfectly capable of deciding whether or not I want to buy an item. I don’t require—or put much stock in reviews. I don’t need computer-generated Recommendations to find a book, and I have learned that glowing reviews fail to tell me as much as a quick look inside the book.
   So no more, Amazon! I will spend my time Reading, not Rating..

   There have always been nods to my textile hobbies in my books—Druyan of The Wind Witch weaves and spins, and coaxes prisoner of war Kellis to sort and card fibers for her endeavors. Elisena spins—her drop spindle, with the pattern of little birds pressed into the clay of the whorl, sits in the room she and Tristan share. Elisena wove a self-repairing cloak for Tristan—a handy skill, as her wizard is really hard on his clothes!
   I never really thought, when I was writing Wizard’s Destiny, about what Elisena might have been doing, while she spun yarn and wove cloth. Years later, I have a better understanding. She could spin miles of yarn while Tristan read those numberless volumes of Calandra’s history aloud to her, and they discussed the nights away. I’m sure she spun protections for her family into her yarn, and unlike me, she probably knits. Socks that never wear out, sweaters that the kids never grow out of. She doesn’t have to make all of her cloth, of course, only what she chooses. She’s had no problem bringing to light the fine fabrics stored away in Crogen’s secret rooms, so there’s plainly more to her textile work than simply acquiring a wardrobe.
   In a few hours, Spinzilla begins. I’m a part of team Dyed in the Wool with Three Sheep, and for seven days spinners all over the globe will be spinning to challenge ourselves—to spin more yarn than we have ever spun before, to try new fibers, to boldly try new methods of spinning and plying…
   I have washed, dyed and carded the entire fleece which Jake the Chardon Farm Park Jacob sheep produced this year. It may well be Jake’s final fleece, and I want to do something special with it. So, that’s the fiber I plan to spin for Spinzilla!

Young or old, self-taught or a university grad, native English speaker or not, whether the project is a novel, poem, short story or forum post, if you choose to call yourself a writer, you agree to a modest standard of literacy, and you should aspire to more.
 
There’s no excuse for not reading, not learning the craft—no one can actually make you write, other than for a class assignment. Writers choose to write. You could just as easily choose to paint, sew, bake bread, braid hair or weld metal into a sculpture.
 
Yet, writers with only a slight command of language write…and publish, now that it’s so easy literally anyone with an internet connection can become a publisher. So either learn to write in a workmanlike way, or don’t publish. Writers need to write. They don’t need to publish what they write. There’s no entitlement in the marketplace, sorry.
 
This post began as a review of an Indie Published “book” Blacky and Me by Thina Muhammad Ali. I will take care that it does not become longer than the book itself, which is at most 10 printed pages. I first became aware of the work as one of many seeking “feedback” on KDP’s Voice of the Author forum—back then the title was Me and My Blacky, and the author was blissfully innocent that her title might be offensive to many, many of her potential customers. After all, it’s simply the story of a girl and her cat, a children’s story.
 
Now the book’s out. And there was another request for “feedback”.  I’ll stand by what I posted: This book should be required reading for all Indie authors. Here’s why:
 
It won’t take you long. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. What you’ll learn: It’s way too short to be broken into five chapters. And extra blank pages and weird formatting are as unattractive as poor spelling and illogical plotting.
 
It won’t cost you much. 99 cents. What you’ll learn: That’s still a lot of money for not much of an experience. Don’t promise your customer what you can’t deliver. Customers expect content, not just the honor of reading your work.
 
It’s got a real nice cover—a lovely witchy woman holding a black cat in front of some scary trees. Might be the book the author had in mind, but it’s not really the book she wrote. What you’ll learn: Don’t mislead the customer with your cover. (And if you credit an illustrator in the Product Description, there ought to be some illustrations in the book.)
 
We’ve all been there. Writing. Yearning to share. Mostly we’ve been 12, and we didn’t publish, but still! I wrote my first books in old diaries. Carefully hand-printed text and chapter headings, dust jackets with watercolors over ink and pencil. I’m so grateful that they are safely locked away, that I never had to face the temptation of sharing them with strangers all over the world. That I kept writing and readings and learning until I had something I was happy to share with an editor, with a publisher, with readers.
 
Thina Muhammad Ali is very brave, to put a barely literate work out for the public’s merciless judgment. May we all have such courage—but let’s learn from every other writer, even if it’s only that there’s a better way, that it’s smart to be prepared, that there’s no need to rush into anything other than doing our best, literate work.